Time to close crawl space vents

When I drive through neighborhoods in the winter, I cannot help but notice how many homes still have their crawl space vents open. This is a huge mistake in terms of trying to keep your home comfortable and your energy bills low. Here’s the scoop.

Home foundations are typically a basement, concrete slab or a crawl space. Of these, normally the crawl space is the only one with vents to the outside. Venting the crawl space is no longer a good idea in our energy efficient homes with heating and air conditioning ducts in the crawl space. These spaces under the home should be considered a “conditioned space” which means they are heated in the winter and “conditioned” in the summer. This post deals primarily with winter heating but here is another post about summer.

Think of your crawl space as a short basement. It should  be insulated around the perimeter on the inside of the crawl space walls. Now this space will be a warm space in the winter. Many homes with a crawl space will have the heating ducts in this area and these ducts perform best when they are in a warm space in the winter. Crawl space vents need to be closed, sealed and insulated to keep the cold winter air out of this area. Note that simply closing the louvers from the outside will seldom seal this opening properly. In addition to closing the louvers, you should go into the crawl space and seal the opening with a tight fitting plug and then add insulation.

Allowing cold air into an otherwise conditioned space can increase energy costs, cause the heated air in the ducts to be cooled, create cold floors and even add to the dryness of your home. If you close your crawl space vents and you are still having comfort issues, call Precision Comfort Systems. We are the home comfort experts in Noblesville, Westfield, Carmel and all other Indianapolis area communities. We discover the real reasons you are not comfortable!

What should you do with these vents in the summer? Check back in May and I will tell you the truth about sealing up these vents forever. Wouldn’t that be great to eliminate the twice per year chore of going into the crawl space?